Britain To Restrict Jury Trials, Ending Jury Nullification For Political Crimes

The uk political class has no priority other than the War On Russia, specifically, in getting the Americans to go to war on britain’s behalf.

Again.

The Americans, for their part, are awfully touchy when it comes to Israel.

A crime is not more of a crime if it is motivated by hate. We already have motivation based modifiers in law (the difference between manslaughter and murder is intent) and those are enough.

It’s tangential to your point, but “hate crime” legislation does have its place. (And there’s no such thing as a ‘hate crime’ per se, what it does is to add possibly more teeth to the punishment for an already-illegal act that someone has been convicted of. You first have the conviction for a ‘real crime’, then an extra penalty might be added). However, upping the penalty for hate being the motivation is not that much of an issue in the most-publicized cases (say, killings) but in lesser crimes.

If, say you’re a member of some disliked minority in a neighborhood, your neighbors could start a campaign of either stealing from you or vandalizing your property in order to cause you mischief. Yes, you probably have insurance, but if you use that insurance for your home or vehicle or business “too many” times the insurance companies will cancel your policies. In many states (such as mine) if any *individual* act of theft or vandalism doesn’t exceed $500, then it doesn’t rise to the status of felony but is a misdemeanor that will disappear off the books after only one or two years.

So, basically, your hostile neighbors could destroy your property, bankrupt you, and force you to sell or lose everything, and do so all at minimal legal risk to themselves. That seem right to you? But if there’s an enhanced penalty by these crimes being classified as “hate crimes”, then the perps might not get off so easy.

The problem is with “terrorism” laws is that they don’t limit the powers to specific actions. We in the US quickly ran into this problem with the Patriot Act, the print was barely dry on the legislation when the Justice Department started publishing memos stating “Did you know the Patriot Act can be used against other crimes than terrorism?” and started to use its provisions for ordinary crimes. If OTH the Act had strictly limited the enhanced investigatory powers to people suspected of specific acts, and moreover it had granted immunity from prosecution for any other illegal activity discovered while using those special powers, then much of the damage would have been limited.

Where’s Guy Fawkes when you need him?

I follow the rough course of British politics on the “in a distant mirror” theory that British political events can foretell or reveal the essence of parallel developments in U.S. and Canada. (Thatcher/Blair, Reagan/Clinton kind of thing).

There are critically distinct institutional differences of course, including the nature of the constitutions in place, the differing bases for social class structure and racism, the way Parties have evolved, and notably, freedom speech and press.

It strikes me as particularly ominous that U.K. has used border control at ports of entry to legalize police intimidation and punishment by process as a means to control dissent by journalists. Proscription of Palestine Action is another instance.

Craig Murray wrote up a trial in Jersey (where jury trial is not an option) that happened yesterday. It makes it easier to read to note that the innocent victim was found not guilty by the bench. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/12/the-terrifying-case-of-natalie-strecker/

That all of this is happening under a Labour government gives me additional reason to pause regarding the Democratic Party, not that there isn’t a large enough pile fully earned by bad conduct.

@Bruce Wilder:

“That all of this is happening under a Labour government gives me additional reason to pause regarding the Democratic Party, not that there isn’t a large enough pile fully earned by bad conduct.”

It has to be the party of goodthink liberals to end civil liberties. Imagine the howls of outrage if a class enemy or (horrors!) a Putin were to do anything similar.

The German Terrorist law in the 80s, the mother of all terrorist laws, defined terrorism as (I quote from memory) “hamper the work of the authorities” and “deal with topics relevant to violent attacks”.

So it was arbitrary as early as that and would include millions if it was applied strictly. But of course it wasn’t intended to. It was simply intended to be an arbitrary threat against anyone the government didn’t like.

Jury nullification and judicial review were historically critical weapons in the political contest between the crypto-Catholic Stuarts, who were trying to rationalize the state along absolutist lines, and, opposing, the Protestant landed gentry and the rising bourgeoisie (and their lawyers), who favored an oligarchy ruling through law and managed in Parliament. Both groups of factions appealed out-of-doors for mass support, organizing the British two-party system of Whigs and Tories, and limited forms of religious tolerance/intolerance.

Refugees from the early stages of the contest carried the ideologies of “the good, old cause” to the colonies of British North America where they informed self-government and, eventually, the Constitution. (Sorry Ken — the Iroquois had nothing to do with it.)

In Britain, they got an established church, a constitutional monarchy, a naval commercial Empire, heavy limitations on freedom of the press (but oddly perhaps until recently not so much on speech or personal liberty).

In the U.S., as the junior partner and good cop, we shared in Britain’s commercial empire. But, we in the U.S. got a federal Republic, lost now to the financial oligarchs. And, extensive freedom of speech, the press and religion — probably lost now to the feckless cosmopolitan woke and Christian nationalists, who have found a strange performative symbiosis in pointless albeit earned mutual contempt.

In complete ignorance of small-c constitutional history, the capacity to think through the complex interplay of opposing interests and diversity of opinion, amidst human ambivalence and strategic ingenuity, I am not sure most people today can even understand why jury nullification can be a critical constraint on the corruption of power and justice.

Political narcissism is epidemic. Refusing to acknowledge or respect an opposing point of view is tactical, but the method acting to perform the pose is strategic. And the pose excludes thinking prudently about co-existence through tolerance. We are back to 17th century authoritarianism, censoring and thinking we can impose untenable dogmas by imposing draconian penalties, justified by paper labels unrelated to any rational moral principle deliberately arrived at in debate and discussion.

An open oligarchy, which I take constitutional representative democracy to be in common practice, requires that politics be circumscribed to enacting and enforcing rules of general application, derived logically from principles of moral intent and value. Subvert that and society is left to the depredations of raw power exercised with particular but inevitably chaotic focus. No one and nothing is safe. It is in the common interest to guard against elite corruption conspiring to exercise such raw power and judicial review and jury nullification were guards discovered in the disputes of the 17th century.

Hate isn’t what is being punished. The strategic nature nature of hate crimes are what set them apart from ordinary criminal violence.

The strategic singling of a sub-group in order to turn members of a polity against each other. That is what earns an extra little whammy.

Diverse societies thrive, until some enterprising little shit-stain gets it into his head, that he can gain power by demonizing a sub-group.

That is happened in Yugoslavia.